Seen anything in TFA that disappointed you?

I hate that I find the flaws of The Force Awakens so aggravating. I wish I could roll with it, like most people seem to do. But the more I think about the film, and it's been spinning in my head all day long, the more I have come to the realization that while the prequel trilogy moved too far away from that Star Wars tone, The Force Awakens tries too hard. I won't be seeing it again until Sunday at the earliest, though.

My son absolutely loved it, so I guess I'm happy for him. I try not to sound negative, as it was a real dad/son moment (better for us than Han and ... Ben.. ) but in my mind the film is already falling (well, except for Jakku; Jakku was solid fun). I'm sure that once the hype and excitement dies down and people begin to analyze this film, there will be more dissenting opinion.

So what exactly bugs me? Well, some of the scenes already mentioned, particularly the Kanjiklub Gang sequence and Snoke; the incessant "rhyming" with the original trilogy to the point that I simply can't accept that thirty years after Jedi, A New Hope kind of happens again. I wish they would've pushed the story into a tale more focused on the main plotline - the search for Luke Skywalker. Everything else felt tacked on - it was fun and entertaining, but it didn't really touch me, not even Han's death (perhaps because it was obvious from the get-go that Han would die).

A story about how Finn and Rey end up searching for Luke, at the same time as Leia's Resistance searches for him, and Kylo Ren searches for him...well that's what we got, obviously, but I would've trimmed some of the fat and made the movie more directly about this quest; a dogfight setpiece could have been part of the film without needing to rehash the "Endor bunker" tale and the "ANH Death Star" tale.

 

The pacing of the film was FAST, REALLY fast and it would have been nice if they had allowed the film to breathe a little by slowing it down.

Wasnt keen on the Maz Katana section, thought the CGI was a bit dodgy and didnt really get the character.

Capatain Phasma was really really under used given the hype

Where on earth did Po end up after crashing the tie fighter?

How did Po Dameron escape Jakku and arrive at the resistance base BEFORE Finnn/Rey??? You could drive a bus through this plot hole.

Which planets did they blow up and why should I care?

Who is MVS character and why is Po meeting him?

Why did Luke leave a map to his location with a missing puzzle piece?? Whats with cryptic clues.

Who is Rey, if shes related to Luke then why didnt Leia mention this, if shes not related to Luke how come she can use the force??

If Finn did work in sanitation(!) then how did he know so much about the Star Killer base weak point!?

 

Two things that bothered me:
1) Kylo's real name - Ben. Are they trying to give a nod to the EU geeks? Is it a nod to Kenobi. IIRC Han and Kenobi didn't get well along and Leia never even met him properly. No wonder he changed his name to Kylo...

2) Captain Phasma: very underused and 'thrown to the trash' after 3-4? appearances. Seemed like a Boba Fett thing in 'Jedi'. Hope Gwendoline Christie gets a bigger role in VIII. I liked her voice and her armor, though.

 

In my opinion there are 3 minor negative details:
1. Not enough Phasma (I hope Ep. VIII can give us a glimpse on her personality);
2. Too much lens flare (but it's ok, it's J.J.'s trademark);
3. R2's sleepiness. Was he waiting for Han to... (you know)? Should name the movie Star Wars: R2 Awakens.
Again, that's only small details. I could add the soundtrack, that doesn't seems as remarkable as before, but there was a lot of action scenes that distracts us from the musical score.
Overall, I don´t saw anything that really disappointed me. Or I need to see it a second time, now...

 

I wasn't that happy with the soundtrack and Teedos luggabeast didn't move that well.

Overall i get what JJ was trying to do with leaving questions unanswered but i think he may have went a little overboard with the mystery box.
I chose music and editing in the poll. Seems like a lot of key bits ended up on the cutting floor and left the movie a bit confusing at times.

Other then some minor flaws like that i really loved the movie and it kind of blew my mind. It is a huge leap forward for Star Wars.

 

Agree with most of what you say but I thought that BB-8 move was rather a thumbs up than a middle finger!?

 

saw it twice yesterday, loved it both times, alternated between smiling like an idiot and crying like a baby for like 5 hours. That said the only thing that disappointed me was how much was seemingly cut out going off that production schedule and other rumours.

- hand to hand fighting between rey and the kanjiklub gang on han's freighter
- the flashback about how Maz ended up with the lightsaber was reduced to "I'll tell you later" and a 30 second force fever dream.
- rey's altercation with unkar plott and chewie ripping plott's arm off
- Maz's scenes were cut down a lot and she disappeared after Takodana instead of being at the resistance base (we see her hand leia the saber in the trailer)
- Leia's secret weapon and the space battle above starkiller
- attached to that, they actually seemed to increase Phasma's role in the movie by having her turn off the shields instead. she gets one mention in that schedule.
- Finn and Rey's snowspeeder journey (when they arrive at the Kylo/Han confrontation you actually see them get off the speeder, so it just happened off screen)

the movie could have easily gone another 10-15 minutes and I don't think anyone would have minded. I hope we get some of these things as deleted scenes, or even an extended cut (though that's probably unlikely). It's also possible some of these will be fleshed out in the novel which will be fine by me.

 

Overall I really, really liked this movie.

But.

The time gap caused that there is a bit too much of a story squeezed into one movie. A little to many questions.

Leia being force sensitive, and yet not being a Jedi is not ticked in any way shape or form. At the end of ep VI it was heavily implied, that she will be trained by Luke. Only "force moment" she had was Han's death.

Underused characters like MVS and Phasma.

Maz Kanata, and Snoke, ain't looking as good as they should. I remember, that Maz being CGI was supposedly due to her "mobility". I didn't really saw this extensive mobility in film, she easily could be a puppet, as originally intended.

But my biggest let down was Death Star 3.0 story arc. It felt forced.

Big Uber Weapon. Plans analyzed by Resistance. One weakness. Time pressure. Squadron of X - Wings. Destruction. A.G.A.I.N.

Come on!

 

Yes, there were few.
Some of the ''funny'' lines were kind of jarring and more like the humour I am used to in Marvel movies.
Luke in the end. Han Solo's death... Altough I saw it coming, I was pretty sad.
The CGI overall was good, or rather, miles better than in the Prequels, that are of course 15-10 years old now, so that makes sense,
but Snoke stood out pretty bad. Maz Kanata was well done and animated, but Snoke felt like Glum in LOTR.
The glimpse of New Republic capital, seconds before destruction. That was damn sad as the visuals looked awesome.
My favorite alien pilot got killed. Phasma got trashed and was kind of useless character, tough a cool one.

But that is nitpicking, as I was pretty excited and liked the movie.
But, in the end, I am coming for negative ratings, as I just missed the George Lucas touch
and I felt a strong presence of Abrams and the worlds weren't much exciting.
It was like a pretty poor Tattoine, Hoth with killing death ray and Endor with lakes.
The Coruscant like planet I liked was destroyed.

 

Loved the movie. I was even surprised by how much I actually liked Finn. My only 2 slight issues is with the film score and the speed at which Rey went from untrained to able to best Kylo Ren. Beyond that wonderful.

 

To me, everything was great or at least acceptable, except for the Death Star re-hash. It was hard to take Starkiller Base very seriously as a threat, given that we've seen the Death Star being destroyed before, and the fact that the threat of the Starkiller Base was diminished by Han and Leia themselves. Given that the heart of the story in the final act was the drama among Rey, Finn, Han, and Kylo anyways, they could easily have replaced Starkiller Base with some other mega-threat MacGuffin. They might even have been able to keep the idea of sucking a sun's power (since that generated some cool visuals) without making the reason for doing so the powering of a Death Star-like mega-weapon. Or how about just finding another kind of confrontation altogether to drive the character drama? Worked for ESB...

And here's another concern. If you have the capacity to destroy a star by sucking in all of its energy. why would you even need to use that energy to destroy any planets? If you destroy the star around which a planet orbits, you've effectively destroyed that planet. It will freeze and die very quickly. Of course, many of its inhabitants will be able to evacuate, but it would still be a devastating blow, and you would have immense amounts of energy left to use for some other purpose...

 

Only thing disappointing was that we have to wait 2 years to see what happen next
If there is a scene that is 8/10 surrounded by dozens of scenes that are 10/10, the 8/10 scene is not "disappointing".
Not for me. Seriously there was nothing in the movie that was disappointing.

 

Those Kylo Ren temper Tantrums were a little comedic. But again I got a vibe that Kylo Ren is not mentally well. Very Psycopathic, he seems to have objective except achieve ultimate power and become more powerful than his grandfather. I don't think he cares for Snoke's and the First Order's interests. Snoke is just his tool for power as he is to Snoke.

 

I just got back from seeing the movie, and overall I liked it very much. As I suspected I would going into it though, I really disliked absolutely everything about the Starkiller base super weapon. I get that this is space fantasy, and ventures outside the realm and boundaries of "normal" sci-fi... but it really seemed as if this whole concept was written by a six year old. The whole story around it was just ridiculous in both form and function. To me, simply nothing about it logistically made any sense whatsoever.

I'll be kind and stop there because I had a lot of fun tonight! That flick was a nice ride.

 

I think JJ Abrams & company did a great job with this movie. Yes there are weaknesses, here are the ones I perceived:

1) The story happened too fast. Alot of action was crammed into this film, and some of the required coincidences felt too contrived.

2) The re-use of OT imagery and plot points felt unoriginal. Yet another Death Star. Yet another shield generator that had to be blown up. Yet another countdown to the use of the Death Star to destroy the rebellion. It was E4 and E6 rolled into one.

3) Luke had no lines.

4) Rey use (or mastery) of the force came too quickly and powerfully, all without any training. Evidently she's Luke's daughter.

Having said all that, there were definite strong points to the film:

1) Rey is the true star of this film and Daisy Ridley is on her way to being a superstar.

2) The humor was excellent, and it came from several characters.

3) The action was well executed. There was no overuse of CGI as promised, and the practical effects all looked great.

4) Kylo Ren's much maligned cross saber actually came in handy in combat. I wasn't expecting that use of it.

5) It's almost as if the PT never happened. I think Snoke is Darth Plagius, and that is the one and only element from the prequels. Everything else either harkened back to the OT, or was completely original.

I give it 7 out of 10. Part of that is me being generous due to JJA having to undo the damage the PT inflicted on the franchise. I honestly believe that E8 will be freed up to be fresher and more original now that disenfranchised fans have been won back.

 

I had no problem with it. The scene where it destroys all those planets was really good. Seeing the people just before they all die and seeing Han and everyone on Takodana looking up. Was really well done I feel.
I also liked the bit where Poe goes inside and starts blowing the crap out of it from inside.

 

I am genuinely glad that others could get past all the issues that couldn't with it. I really did enjoy the hell out the movie nonetheless!

That said, I would hate to be the guy from Lucasfilm Story Group that has to write out the specifics for an official reference on the precise way that weapon worked... or even the guy that has to handle the Wookiepedia entry. Ouch.

 

We can imagine however we want. A lightsabre with a handle as big as a Death Star and if ignited within range of a planet, what happens?

 

A couple points from me..

*Initial dialogue regarding the map to Luke.
*Over reliance on battle sequences.
*Chewbacca being emasculated.
*Kylo Ren throwing fits, and taking off his helmet. (seemed more Spaceballs to me)
*Millennium Falcon always doing it's CGI thing cruising over water, until it was annoying instead of cool.
*Characters being introduced, then not explained or cut from scenes. (Max, Phasma)

 

I thought this was a really really good movie. My only grip with the script was the relationship between the (now extinct?) New Republic, First Order and the Resistance. The prequels had excessive political minutae but this one had absolutely nothing to explain to the viewers what's the current state of the galaxy.